10 Privacy Tips for Dorm Living

A college education is more than what you learn in the lecture halls. Sometimes, the greatest lessons are learned elsewhere on campus -- like, say, in your dorm room. Sharing a space that may be smaller than your bedroom at home with another person (or several people) is a crash course in human relations and social psychology. Your tiny room becomes a lab where your social skills are put to a variety of surprisingly difficult tests.

For many dorm dwellers, one of the biggest challenges is the lack of privacy. Between shared closets, showers and laundry facilities, you may feel like your entire life is on display. Even best friends sometimes recoil from intimacy overload.

But communal living doesn't have to mean waking to find your roommate's buddies sleeping on your floor. How can you carve out personal time and space and set up ground rules to make living in the dorm's cramped quarters a bit easier?